About ME

Hi, I’m Nancy! 

My first memory is of my mom reading to me. My first book I remember her reading to me is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. She would read a chapter every night. I still remember when she asked me if she could take Sundays off. I told her she could — only if she would read me two chapters on Saturday.

There was something about that book — about a young girl in a gray world going to a brilliantly colored fantasy world where she has to face and overcome challenges that spoke deeply to me. Maybe it was because I grew up in the Bronx, where everything was gray, from the sidewalks to my neighborhood playground, which was all concrete with steel swings and not a blade of grass in sight. I realized that books opened doors and could take you through time and space and to that most magical place of all — another person’s heart.

I was always writing poems and stories. In school I wrote and edited newspapers. I always wanted to write books, but I had never met an actual author and I didn’t know how to do that. But I had met journalists and so I decided to do that. For years I wrote for The Los Angeles Times and The Dallas Morning News in addition to other publications. I wrote about many different things over the years but my favorite position was being theater critic at both those newspapers. Growing up in New York City, I had always loved theater. I still love theater. Like books, theater takes us through time and space and into the heart of others. In fact, looking back, I think that being a theater critic got me ready for being an author. Because I realized that to write someone’s story, I had to be like an actor, feeling that story as my own, in order to bring it alive for others.

Even while I was a journalist, I kept writing manuscripts that I kept in file cabinets. Then I met Steve Sandy, a Deaf historian, who told me his dream that one day the great Deaf baseball player William Hoy would be in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The better I knew Steve and the more he taught me about Hoy, the more I wanted to help. I proposed writing a book about Hoy for kids. Steve promised to help with the research, including introducing me to the Hoy family. I got to work. It took YEARS because I didn’t know what I didn’t know about writing books, but Steve never gave up on me and I never gave up on helping Steve — and Hoy. The William Hoy Story became my first published book in March 2016. I dedicated it to my parents and have kept writing and publishing ever since.

For professional headshots, please go here:  https://kimtakespictures.zenfolio.com/nancychurninphotos

Q and A with Nancy

 What DID YOU LIKE TO READ AS A KID?

Everything! I can’t remember how I learned to read except that one day while my Mom was reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to me, she looked at me and said, “I think you know how to read this.” And it was true. I was so impatient waiting for the next chapter that I had somehow figured out how to read it myself. And from there I read everything, from fantasy to fiction to nonfiction to poetry to science fiction whatever was written on the cereal box while I ate my breakfast. I never liked to be without a book, so I always had one with me wherever I went. My parents loved to read, too, and we had one room that had bookshelves from floor to ceiling that we called the library. It was my favorite room of the house! I also loved going to my local library (and my school library) where I could always count on the librarians to put books I loved in my hands.

If you could be a character in a picture book, who would you be and why?

Dorothy in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz of course and Meg Murry in A Wrinkle in Time and Fern in Charlotte’s Web and Lucy in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit and Sam and Frodo in The Hobbit and Johnny in Johnny Tremaine because all these characters found themselves in challenging situations that they met with courage and love and kindness. They remind me that courage is doing the right thing even when you are afraid and that the greatest powers we have to change the world for the better are love and kindness.

What are your favorite foods? 

I love dark chocolate! I adore experimenting with tofu prepared in lots of different ways. I’m crazy about soup — one of the many things I loved about The Tale of Desperaux is that they ate soup all the time. I’m big on vegetables and fresh bread. I’m a fan of pizza and eggplant parmesan. I remember years ago, I met the author Isaac Bashevis Singer. He was a vegetarian which was something I didn’t understand at the time. I asked him if he didn’t eat meat because of his health. He said, “No, for the health of the chickens.” His words echoed in my head when I finally decided to stop eating meat.

What do you do when you’re not reading or writing? 

I love to cook and bake and spend time with my family. I am happy reading to my two grandchildren, Lydia and Ezra. I enjoy walking my dog named Dog, playing Scrabble, singing and reading. I’m a lifetime learner and one of the things I love is learning languages! I’m studying multiple languages on Duolingo: Spanish, French, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Gaelic. But if I don’t do some writing every day, I feel lost. Writing stories fills my heart.

What is your favorite quote?

That answer, like my favorite book, can change daily. But two quotes that stick in my mind lately are from The Lord of Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien:

“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.”

and

“There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”